We’re Not in Kansas Anymore, Toto

While “A Christmas Carol” commands the American stage this month, what are they doing in London? “The Wizard of Oz.”

At least that’s what they’re doing at the Royal Shakespeare Company. The RSC’s big holiday show this year is a stage version of the MGM musical, probably the same script that American community theaters have been using for years.

“It’s a classical text,” director Ian Judge told the Associated Press’s Matt Wolf. “It’s moved into people’s memories.”

Judge’s production features 26 kids as Munchkins and a 31-year-old Dorothy, Imelda Staunton. The Wicked Witch of the West is played by a man, Billie Brown. That’s in line with the tradition of British Christmas pantomime, which always has an older male whooping around in a dress.

Meanwhile, another RSC troupe, half British, half American, is rehearsing a new musical based on the horror film “Carrie.” This will do a four-week warmup at Stratford-on-Avon and take off for Broadway.

It’s the sort of thing that happens when a state-supported company is expected to piece out its income with commercial projects. One has to wonder about its effect on the RSC’s original mandate: to produce Shakespeare.

Theater retains its capacity to disturb those in places of power. The New York Times reports that 25 of Chile’s leading actors and directors received letters from a death squad associated with the Pinochet regime, ordering that they leave the country by Nov. 30. Instead they held a theater festival.

And in Nepal, according to Reuters, the National Theatre of the Dance was refused permission for its version of “Hamlet,” on the grounds that it offended that country’s royal tradition.